MEXICO CITY, Dec 23, 2023 (BSS/AFP) - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Friday that his government would step up efforts to contain irregular migration flows, ahead of a high-level US visit next week.

The pledge came a day after Lopez Obrador spoke with US President Joe Biden by telephone about the hot-button issue.

Lopez Obrador said the "extraordinary" migration situation would be the focus of talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior US officials in Mexico City on Wednesday.

He said that Mexico would boost containment measures in the south near the Guatemalan border.

"The agreement is that we continue working together and we already have a proposal to reinforce our plans," Lopez Obrador said.

Blinken will be accompanied on his visit by Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and White House Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood Randall, the Biden administration said Thursday.

Blinken will "discuss unprecedented irregular migration... and identify ways Mexico and the United States will address border security challenges, including actions to enable the reopening of key ports of entry across our shared border," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

The US delegation will "underscore the urgent need for lawful pathways and additional enforcement actions by partners throughout the region," he added in a statement.

The talks come as the rival Republican Party pushes Biden's Democrats for major changes on immigration policy in exchange for approving a package of emergency assistance for Ukraine and Israel.

US border police have in recent weeks reported approximately 10,000 crossings every day.

The previous fiscal year, from October 2022 through September 2023, saw a record 2.4 million encounters by US border patrol with migrants, including at both official ports of entry and elsewhere along the southern border.

In a stark illustration of the dangers facing them, two migrants drowned on Thursday while trying to cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican city of Matamoros, south of Brownsville, Texas.

Images obtained by AFP showed three men struggling to keep their heads above water clogged with vegetation and garbage, before two of them disappeared beneath the surface.

The migrants were trying to cross despite the mud and detritus because there were no Mexican immigration agents at the location, witnesses told AFP.